A ride of six miles from the mouth of the Waiho brings you to Okarito—a tiny township and port—its one street all grass-grown, and only a few houses and the wharf to mark what was, in the days of gold, a big and thriving town. In those days it had two Churches, many banks and hotels, and in the saloons, gay doings night after night.
Another eight mile ride through the forest brought us to a small hotel, where I joined the mail coach which took me back to trains and towns, and very sorrowfully I said goodbye to the mountains and to my friends in Westland.
CHAPTER XIII
THE WAITOMO CAVES
As in other countries, so in New Zealand, there are limestone caves, with stalactites and stalagmites, and all their effect of wonder and mystery. They are found in some of the low hills which rise in the heart of the Maori-owned "King Country," and as they are only a few miles from the Main Trunk railway line, which connects Wellington with Auckland, they can be very conveniently visited by tourists going north or south.
The distance from Wellington to the caves is three hundred miles. Even on the main lines the average speed of an express train is only twenty-five miles an hour, so that a journey of three hundred miles takes a whole day, and gives the traveller many excellent opportunities for studying the landscape.
The trains run on a 3 foot 10 inch gauge; except for a few miles in the South Island, there is but a single line throughout the Dominion; often the trains accomplish well-nigh impossible feats in crawling up and down precipitous gorges, and yet so carefully are they handled that an accident is almost an unheard-of occurrence. Nearly all the first-class carriages are on the corridor plan, with a gangway up the middle. There are two seats on one side and only one on the other, and the seats have movable backs, made to face either way. The seats are numbered and can be reserved separately.